How I Met Your Mother: Season 5

As readers may recall, last winter I pounded through the first four seasons of How I Met Your Mother, a CBS sitcom that many (myself included) have called the best current show that still uses a laugh track. After seeing Season 5, however, I'm not so sure that praise is warranted. This batch of 24 episodes - the final six or so in particular - just fell really flat. This show has always been one where punchlines and immediate laughs can take a backseat to emotional character-driven storytelling, and for three or four seasons it did a great job playing that balancing act. Loads of laughs, and then a little bit of relationship drama. Funny bits with a sprinkling of character progression and maturity. But it all kind of falls apart at the seams in Season 5. The same cast is there. The same format is there. Something intangible just seems to be missing. There isn't as much progression toward any kind of resolution for any of the characters; Ted continues to date haplessly, Marshall and Lily spend yet another year being married with nothing to do, and Barney and Robin have a short-lived and ill-fated relationship. Wheels are spinning but we're not getting anywhere. And that'd be fine on most sitcoms because most sitcoms are about episodic conundrums and the silly fashion in which they're handled. (See: Big Bang Theory.) But despite its laugh track, How I Met Your Mother has never been a show that just churns out raw humor for the lowest common denominator. And when the long range story progression is absent, this show suffers. Remember, this whole series is ostensibly just one long-winded story about how a man met his children's mother. By the time the final six episodes rolled around, it looked like the writing staff was just hopelessly stuck, and perhaps even bored. Both the story and the jokes felt tired and meaningless. If anything, there was character regression as each of the five friends became less likable by season's end. Say what you want about Friends, but that show - which this one strives to be - took twice as long to ruin itself. Obviously, one bad season doesn't signify a total shark jump. but sometimes a slight derailing can lead to a woeful downward spiral. Five or six episodes deep into Season 6 (currently airing), I'm still watching How I Met Your Mother, but almost begrudgingly. I just think it needs to start taking some risks. All five main characters have grown stagnant and boring, and so has the show itself.